Online fraud: Interswitch fortifies cards security

Interswitch Nigeria Ltd, Nigeria'sforemost pan-African integrated transaction and payment-processing firm, has refortified the security level of its cards to boost the confidence of their holders to shop online and improve the image of the country.It said it had increased the security designs of its web payment platform to ensure adequate security for the cardholders.According to Mr Charles Ifedi, Director of Payment Solution, Interswitch, also created four categories for online merchants.He said these categories determined the level of trust each merchant could extend to online shoppers. 'For example, a school is in a higher category of risk than an airline. This carries a higher risk than a shop, and a shop has a higher category than a merchant selling airtime.'There are categories that we have set to make sure that there are limit to what people can do. If you want to transact higher value, what you need to do is go to your bank and get a one-time password system so that the system can guarantee that you are the genuine owner of the card data', he said.He further stated that Interswitch's web payment platform had been verified by Visa, explaining that the 'implication is that all transactions on the platform are secure'.Another security features noticeable on the site to protect online retailers is the sign of a 'padlock,' to show that the site is secure.He said, 'once you see that padlock at our site, you automatically know that anything you enter at that point is being encrypted online, real time all the way to your bank. So nobody can break it in-between'.Speaking on the ongoing nationwide Verve consumer promo by the company, Mr Ifedi said this was the reason for the company's confidence that the level of security that existed online now was higher than before, adding that even if the card details of an online customer were stolen, the Verve card could not be cloned unlike before.This is because with the chip and PIN technology used for the Verve card, 'no one can steal your card details on the internet'.He added that the security level also ensured that merchants that had websites could not capture cardholders' card data 'because if they are able to capture card data of cardholders, it is additional risk.
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